Wednesday afternoon I cried at the airport while I said goodbye to Mom and Julie; then I was on a big shiny airplane bound for Amsterdam. It was about 5:15am local time when we touched down, and since I had nearly 8 hours until my connecting flight to Accra I decided to head to the city and explore a little bit. With the help of a quick train from the airport I was downtown shortly thereafter, and it was around 8:30am when I was walking up the bank of one of the canals through a glorious morning glowing blue and yellow with crystal-clear Steely Dan pouring from my iPod into my ears. Stopping on one of the bridges to take it in, I decided I must have some pictures, and I fished through my bag to find the digital camera. Lo and behold, the memory card was full; so I ambled through deleting a couple “extraneous” shots.

Then it was with only the slightest slip of the thumb that I chose to “Delete all images and sound” and then I was left to watch helplessly as the little LCD went black and flashed “Deleting” in perfect little white letters for the next 30 seconds or so. At exactly the moment that message first flashed, the song changed to “Rikki Don’t Lose that Number”. The lyrics:

We hear you’re leaving, that’s ok
I thought our little wild time had just begun
I guess you kind of scared yourself, you turn and run
But if you have a change of heart
Rikki don’t lose that number
You don’t wanna call nobody else
Send it off in a letter to yourself
Rikki don’t lose that number
Its the only one you own
You might use it if you feel better
When you get home

So it was, and so it is that I have lost the pictures; all of them. My first diagnosis was benevolent divine intervention: the fates wanted to drive home the “break with the past” dimension of this adventure and conceived this clever way to induce me to throw myself into the world of Accra with reckless abandon. The second diagnosis was instant karma: an immediate (and fitting) punishment for my own desperate need to take a picture of the beautiful canal in the glowing light of the Amsterdam morning, to try and grasp it rather than to let it pass. The final diagnosis is, sadly, simple and atheistic: foolishness, ineptitude, and hastiness.

On one hand, perhaps this is not such a tragedy: now many of you are bottled up in the index cards you so thoughtfully filled up at my going away party this past Sunday. Though I have not read them yet (I’m trying to hold out on reading them until a low point, when they will completely resurrect my spirits) I have no doubt that the sentiments contained there paint a more beautiful picture of my friends and family than could ever be captured on camera. On the other hand, the appetites of a nostalgic mind are unpredictable, so I submit to everyone who happens on this passage a desperate plea: Please send me pictures! Send them to jacob.appel@gmail.com! Send them so I will not forget!

The news from Accra: when I arrived it was dark and there was a throng of Ghanaians waiting outside the airport terminal and everything seemed dark and hot except for the other tall white guy. That’s Justin, my first friend here, and the country director for IPA’s projects in Ghana. He spirited me away from the throng and into a taxi which took us to his apartment, in the Trade Fair section of Accra. Unfortunately, when we arrived there was no electricity and no water. Electricity is on a rolling blackout schedule whereby every third day it shuts off for 12 hours. The water is on a seemingly entirely random schedule whereby it is unavailable whenever it is most desperately needed. So we just dropped my things and headed for Osu, the “hip nightlife district” of Accra. Here we feasted on grilled whole tilapia and banku (a sticky, starchy ball of cornmeal and cassava flour) and Castle Milk Stout, then headed back to the apartment and hit the hay.

Friday (today) is my first full day. It began with a hardboiled egg from a street stand, then took us to Areeba mobile phone services store (where I bought a nifty wireless modem that should give me internet for good!), then to a house full of Canadian journalists with rooms available, then to the offices of Opportunity International – Sinapi Aba Savings and Loan (the partner organization we’re working with), then to one more housing opportunity (this a stand-alone villa in a Ghanaian family’s compound – actually a pretty beautiful house!) and finally back here to Justin’s apartment.

The people thus far are extremely friendly and they smile almost all the time. There are fewer beggars than in Morningside Heights. It is hot as blazes during the day and a little better at night. The sewers are among the most hazardous I’ve ever seen, some a yard deep and a few feet across, some covered by grates and others open. That notwithstanding, they are actually not very dirty and they generally don’t smell bad. Taxi drivers are at least as crazy as their counterparts in Manhattan, and the average taxi was built before the breakup of the USSR.

This isn’t quite home yet; but it’s only been a day. By tomorrow I will have a telephone, and by Monday maybe my own place! How’s that for adjustment?

I’m thinking of you (plural) all the time and smiling like a Ghanaian as a result. Thank you for everything! Send pictures!